Fierro: Eagles' failure to finish is worse than slow starts

Monday

ATLANTA — Too much has been made by coaches and players alike of the Philadelphia Eagles’ inability to start games fast.

As the saying goes, it’s not how you start, it’s how you finish. This is their issue more than anything else when they lose.

Sunday night, they battled from behind to finally take the lead in the fourth quarter, then couldn’t hold on. The week before, they came back from a 17-0 deficit to beat Washington, but gave up a late touchdown and would have given up another if Case Keenum hadn’t overthrown Terry McLaurin, or they might be staring down the barrel of an 0-2 record today.

In the playoffs last January, they started faster than anyone could have reasonably expected by going up 14-0 at New Orleans. How’d that work out for them? They never scored again en route to a 20-14 loss.

In the playoffs the year before, Minnesota came in for the NFC Championship Game, took a 7-0 lead and was driving for another score when Patrick Robinson returned an interception for a touchdown. Eagles 38, Vikings 7.

Point is, there’s absolutely no correlation between the way they start games and the final results of them. Fast starts are about as impactful as spring-training home runs.

Sure, it’s always better to come out strong at the start. But given that this is the NFL and no team is going to be successful on every offensive and defensive series, it’s actually better that the Eagles get all of their misplays out of the way early and save their best for last few minutes, which is what just about every game in this league comes down to anyway these days.

They can afford slow starts. They just can’t afford poor finishes. This has been their problem dating all the way back to the start of last season.

Sunday night, same thing.

As magnificently as quarterback Carson Wentz played in the second half after not being able to hit water if he fell out of a boat in the first, he was betrayed by his team’s inability to finish.

The Falcons scored on a 54-yard catch-and-run to regain the lead, Nelson Agholor lost a surefire touchdown pass in the lights and ... boom, next thing you know we’re listening to Wentz lament his poor start (among other things), as if a cleaner start against the Falcons would have changed the outcome.

Doubtful it would have.

“Wish I had an answer,” Wentz said. "Obviously it’s something that we’re always looking at. By no means are we making excuses, but we were trying to figure out who we had out there and get the guys in a good position, and I think the coaches did a good job with that.

“We’ve just got to execute better early, and we’ll take a hard look at it.”

Better to focus that energy on finishing, because it’s almost as if the Eagles believe their problems will be solved if they could just get off to stronger starts.

They won’t.

In the big games against the best opponents, things have a way of evening out. That’s just the way it goes in this league. When going against, say NFC East rival Dallas, it doesn’t matter if either team jumps out to a big lead. Chances are it will be a one-score game coming down the stretch either way.

Finishing most often means just not doing anything to lose. Don’t lose a ball in the lights (or even claim to have lost it in the lights). Don’t call a zero blitz with everyone within five yards of the line of scrimmage at the snap. Run to the first-down marker on fourth down before trying to fight for a catch.

Once again, the concept that most NFL games are lost and not won was on display Sunday night. The Eagles lost. Had they come out ahead, it would best be described as the Falcons losing, not the Eagles winning. Both teams failed down the stretch. The Eagles just failed more.

All that said, the Eagles have been pretty darn good at this part. Doug Pederson and his staff make in-game adjustments as well as anyone, setting them up for strong finishes. Just look what they did on this night, after losing tight end Dallas Goedert in pregame warmups and wide receivers DeSean Jackson and Alshon Jeffery in the opening minutes. Wentz and Agholor each had to be pulled for a portion of the game as well.

And it’s why the locker room was surprisingly upbeat after Sunday’s defeat. They’ve been here before.

They were 1-1 last season too and advanced in the playoffs. They were 1-1 in 2017 and won the Super Bowl.

They were 3-0 in 2016 and, well, you get the idea.

Nick Fierro writes for the Morning Call.

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